Jeremy Lin worked incredibly hard to make himself NBA-worthy:

The New York Knicks sensation is thriving not because his skeptics were wrong. Lin is thriving because he realized they were right.

He really was too willowy to survive the muscled forest of an NBA defense. He really was lacking a consistent jump shot.

So Lin rewrote his scouting report, reinventing himself shot by shot and pound by pound.

"That's the lesson here: If you don't like the way things are going for you in a sport, don't cry about it. Don't whine to the coach. Do something about it," said Doc Scheppler, who helped Lin refine his shooting fundamentals.

Over the span of more than three body-transforming months, Lin doubled the amount of weight he could squat (from 110 pounds to 231 pounds), nearly tripled the number of pull-ups he could do (from 12 to 30) and abandoned the shooting form he'd been using since eighth grade (he's now among the most accurate point guards in the NBA).

He did so by crisscrossing the Bay Area all summer, honing his shooting touch with Scheppler in Los Altos Hills, building up his lower-leg strength with trainer Phil Wagner in Menlo Park and sculpting his upper body with E.J. Costello at 24 Hour Fitness in Pleasanton -- often on the dame day.

"He's got the mental makeup of a Hall of Famer," Wagner said.

I'm sure that diet helped, too.

Compare how thin he was in early 2011 with him training in November 2011 and with how strong he is in February 2012:

I was at the Warriors game tonight, and at one point I commented, "It's like this team doesn't have a strength and conditioning coach." Golden State's thin, whippy players consistently failed to finish strong; whereas the Grizzlies were able to just bull the ball into the basket time after time. I suspect that the lockout might have freed up Jeremy Lin mentally to seek help outside the team's resources... which has worked out well for him.

That makes sense, unfortunately. Lin HAD to leave the Warriors to succeed.

Which indicates that the Warriors organization has some significant cultural challenges to overcome if they are to become a winning team.

See also: How Jeremy Lin Upped His Game: Shooting for Success.